Gunned down in broad daylight: Killings spotlight limitations as domestic violence spikes in Nebraska

This story contains descriptions of domestic abuse. If you or a loved one is experiencing abuse, click here for a list of Nebraska service providers, or call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) if you need immediate help.

On a frigid night in the winter of 2020, little things set Ibrahim Alhamadani off. 

A night out with his former girlfriend turned upside down when he got into an altercation downtown. 

His temper flared; they left and went home. 

She tried to smoke a cigarette; he hit her on the back of the head. 

He pinched her arms, hit her face, and choked her. Then came the death threats, a 911 call for help and a standoff with police.

As the hours dragged on, the woman “did not think she was going to make it through the night,” an officer later wrote.

Police ultimately arrested Alhamadani and his former partner did make it through the night. But after several years in prison, Alhamadani found a new girlfriend — and his abuse didn’t stop at a threat. 

Court documents show that law enforcement knew Alhamadani was a danger to others long before he shot and killed Michelle Gonzalez on a Lincoln street in broad daylight on Feb. 26. He’d been in and out of prison and probation since 2018, when he was first convicted for a domestic violence offense. 

In each documented instance of Alhamadani’s abuse, the women he terrorized did things the “right way.” They filed protection orders, spoke with police and tried to cut off contact with him. For Gonzalez, setting that boundary became fatal.

She is one of at least four women killed by a romantic partner in Nebraska this year. All but one had taken legal steps to distance themselves from their abuser before their deaths.

The killings have placed fresh scrutiny on how Nebraska prevents domestic violence at a time when advocates say demand for their services has never been higher. 

In Lincoln, where two of the slayings occurred, protection order requests have skyrocketed since 2019, according to police data released in March. And the number of reported violations has jumped by 62% compared to the five-year average. 

At the same time, resources are failing to keep pace with the growing need, advocates say. And attempts by lawmakers to ease the resource squeeze have so far fallen short.

“After 27 years in this field, I have never been as deeply concerned about the future of victim services and their funding as I am today,” Carmen Hinman, executive director of Hope Crisis Center, told state lawmakers in March. “Without stable state support, the long-term impact could be devastating … in a very real human cost of lost lives and shattered families.”

State leaders have in recent years introduced several measures as they try to understand and combat domestic violence. Nebraska prisons for the first time in years are offering intervention programming. And a new team dedicated to reviewing domestic violence deaths has released its first report, setting the stage for future legislative recommendations.

Even with that movement, Nebraska is playing catch-up.

“Many states have been doing this for decades, so we are way behind the eight ball,” said Tara Richards, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Limited tools

When Casey Kindt kicked in Jamie Hagen’s door and shot her to death on Feb. 8 before turning the gun on himself, he left a trail of destruction in her Seward home. 

“When we were going in and out of the house unloading things, every time that we would … push the door open, you could hear the ‘snap’ sound from the door trim,” said Allison Hempfling, Hagen’s stepsister. “It was kind of like reliving what that would have sounded like that night.”

 Kindt survived his suicide attempt and faces murder charges. The family is navigating who gets custody of Hagen’s two daughters. And a swell of community outrage has prompted fierce criticism of the local judge who set Kindt’s bail.

After Kindt violated the terms of his bail for domestic violence charges the first time, Judge C. Jo Petersen upped Kindt’s bail from $50,000 to $75,000. He bonded out a second time, ignored both the conditions of his bail and an active protection order, and shot Hagen the next day. 

Hempfling has a hard time understanding why Kindt was allowed out in the first place. His apartment was within walking distance of Hagen’s, she said. 

“If he got that thought in his head, he didn’t really have to think about it much,” she said. “He just walked a block down the street and he’s right there.”

Petersen, citing Nebraska’s code of judicial conduct, declined to comment.

Protection orders are a great tool in some situations, said Natalie Roberts-Day, executive director of Voices of Hope in Lincoln. But they’re only as effective as an abuser lets them be. 

“An abuser who doesn’t respect the law, doesn’t care about getting arrested, who feels like they have nothing left to lose … They are much less inclined to respect the protection order, versus someone who maybe has high status in their community, really is concerned about their public image,” she said. 

Advocates say that in the weeks following the killings, some Nebraska survivors reconsidered their plans to leave their abusers, fearful of triggering the same rage from their partners. 

Jo Bair, executive director for enCourage Advocacy Center in Hastings, worries that focusing on the effectiveness of protection orders — instead of encouraging survivors to work with experts on personalized safety plans — will only worsen that fear.

“The reality is really dangerous, potentially lethal things were already happening, and that’s why that protection order was necessary … I have been very concerned that the way the stories are told actually discourages help seeking behavior,” Bair said.

Increasing risk

Elizabeth McQueen is all too familiar with law enforcement’s limitations when responding to domestic violence. McQueen leads the Lincoln Police Department’s victim assistance unit, which helps survivors navigate the legal system.

Her unit is small; she now manages only two full-time employees.

“It just depends on funding, honestly,” she said.

Each morning, the advocates pore over police reports, identify victims to reach out to and then split up the responsibility of calling each one. The goal: Provide help within 72 hours of receiving a report. Most days, the unit also gets walk-ins. 

“There are so many people that have so many needs, and we have resources that are stretched fairly thin, that are trying so hard to meet all those needs,” McQueen said.

Both requests for protection orders — and the number of people violating them — have risen in the past five years. 

Data provided by the Lincoln Police Department shows there were more than 1,500 protection orders requested in 2024; the department received more than 550 protection order violation reports the same year, and issued more than 360 citations for violations.

Dani Jurgens, development director for Friendship Home in Lincoln, has seen the rising demand first hand. 

When she started as a case manager in 2005, Friendship Home had two communal living shelters, able to host a total of 50 people. Their waitlist was long. 

On March 25, Jurgens said, the organization was actively serving 230 people.

“A lot of those that are coming to us are reporting more often threats of homicide or murder,” Jurgens said. “They’ve reported enhanced and more threats of stalking. A lot more people that we’re serving are telling us that they had experienced strangulation or choking at one point in a relationship.”

Economic pressure

In 2023, Christon MacTaggart was excited. 

The Nebraska Legislature had just passed a bill that would appropriate $6 million over two years for dozens of domestic violence service providers across the state. As executive director of the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, MacTaggart knew firsthand how desperately providers needed that money.

But as the months dragged on, MacTaggart’s hopes began to dim. Lawmakers had decided to appropriate the money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reserve fund, a federal program with strict reporting requirements — requirements that directly conflicted with the confidentiality requirements domestic violence service providers are beholden to for other federal funding sources.

Ultimately, there was no pathway to access the funding and comply with reporting requirements, MacTaggart said.

The loss of that anticipated money, combined with decreases from other funding sources like the federal Crime Victims Fund, has been catastrophic, providers said. Some organizations have laid off staff and cut shelter capacity. 

At the same time, demand for victim services continues to rise. The Hope Crisis Center, which has offices in Beatrice, Crete, Fairbury, Seward and York, estimated calls to its emergency hotline have nearly doubled since 2019. The duration of shelter stays has also increased.

Earlier this year Sen. Jason Prokop, a Democrat from Lincoln, introduced a potential fix for the 2023 bill. But as lawmakers wrestle with a $289 million budget deficit, it’s unclear if the bill will come up for consideration. Prokop said he will bring it up again next year if the Legislature fails to act this year. 

While funding has remained stagnant, the downstream impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including rising cost of living and increased housing instability, have put added pressure on survivors. A 2024 paper prepared by Nebraska’s legislative research office said the state lacks sufficient affordable rental housing for extremely low-income households. 

For survivors of domestic violence, many of whom are pressured not to work by their partners, finding a new home can be a monumental task. 

“Domestic violence is a dynamic of power and control,” said Mandy VanLaningham, coordinator of development, education, and strategy for Hope Crisis Center. “When someone is struggling financially, there’s 1,000,001 ways to exercise control over them and make their lives a living hell.”

Methods of intervention

When Alhamadani was first convicted of domestic violence, he was granted probation with several conditions. Among them: attend a series of outpatient intervention programs and report his completion to his parole officer. 

But Alhamadani violated those conditions, which led to 120 days in jail starting in April 2020, according to a court filing. 

While behind bars, Alhamadani couldn’t attend the domestic violence intervention program he’d previously been required to complete; at the time, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services didn’t offer it to those actively incarcerated. 

“You had people that were being assessed as having that need, and yet they weren’t getting any programs in there,” said Doug Koebernick, inspector general of the Nebraska Correctional System. “And they were going back out in the community.”

Koebernick in 2019 began pushing the department to implement an intervention program behind bars. He learned that the prison system had previously offered an intervention program, then ended it because of questions around its efficacy.

Working with Richards, the UNO criminal justice professor, and the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, corrections officials eventually rolled out a new pilot program in 2023. 

Dayne Urbanovsky, director of strategic communications for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, wrote in an email that 138 Nebraskans have successfully completed the program since September 2024. Another 133 are currently enrolled while serving time.

Currently more people are flagged for the program than practitioners can actually serve. Richards hopes to study the recidivism rates of those who make it in the program and those who don’t. 

The prison pilot program joins existing programming for people on probation for domestic violence-related crimes. 

Those programs are run by organizations like enCourage Advocacy Center in Hastings, which uses facilitators and group discussions to challenge participants’ beliefs and actions. Its 36-week program costs its participants $960.

That’s because there is little federal or state funding for this work, Richards said, and little incentive for more providers to offer it because the margins are so slim. 

“This is not going to be a money making enterprise. … Insurance isn’t going to cover this,” Richards said. “So those are a lot of the challenges of being able to provide this in the community.”

Looking forward

Three years ago, Nebraska lawmakers passed the Domestic Abuse Death Review Act. 

It came after the killings of Brooke Koch and Hailey Christensen in 2021 and 2020. Both women were killed by romantic partners. 

The act created a team to track all domestic violence deaths, with the ultimate goal of making recommendations for future actions. It released its first report in 2024.

The statistics were staggering.

Forty-three people died of domestic violence from July 2022 to July 2024. Half those deaths involved a gun. Six murder-suicides occurred during the reporting period; all were committed by men. 

The report identified a lack of support for loved ones after a death. It suggested agencies were using lethality assessments inconsistently, tools which can help determine the level of danger a victim faces. It noted easy access to firearms for abusers and barriers to legal services for victims.

MacTaggart, with the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, is a member of the review team. She said she is confident it will be able to produce legislative recommendations in the future.

Richards, the UNO professor, said the review team will help give providers and others in domestic violence prevention a more complete picture. 

“That’s not to say no one at the state level was paying attention, but now you really have critical infrastructure and a team and someone whose job it is to do this,” she said.

Nebraska was one of only nine states without a review team before the legislation was passed. Richards said that often, when horrible things like the killings in February and March happen, people’s first inclination is to say, “We have to do something, damn it!”

That’s absolutely true, she said, but “these are really complicated issues.” Change must be data driven. 

“And that really takes targeted effort,” Richards said. “I’m really hopeful we’re going to make some big strides.”